ordinary everyday folk like us." Al-
though two inmates had testified that
they were eating breakfast with Wood-
fox at the time of the crime, the jury
deliberated for less than an hour before
finding him guilty. A year later, Wal-
lace was also convicted by an all-white
jury. ( Jackson became a witness for the
prosecution, and Montague was acquit-
ted, because prison records showed that
he was in the infirmary at the time of
the murder.) After the trials, the war-
den secured Hezekiah Brown's pardon
and release, using prison funds to pay
for his campaign for clemency.
Woodfox and Wallace, sentenced to
life without parole, were returned to
Closed Cell Restricted and placed in
six-by-nine-foot cells. For more than
five years, they never went outside.
W to
cry only when everyone else on
the tier was asleep. His youngest brother,
Michael, who visited the prison every
month, said that Woodfox no longer
permitted himself the pleasure of rem-
iniscing about their childhood. Hand-
cu ed and shackled, he spoke through
a heavy wire-mesh screen. "He can't allow
the pain to be expressed," Michael told
me. "He feels he has to be a conqueror,
a leader, a demonstration for other men.
He doesn't want people to know he has
weaknesses."
Woodfox and Wallace soon became
close with another Panther, Robert King,
who was also in C.C.R. and had been
convicted of killing an inmate.They be-
lieved that he, too, had been framed be-
cause of his connection to the Party.
The three men had all been raised by
single women in New Orleans; had met
their fathers only a few times, or not at
all; had dropped out of school, because
they didn't see the point of it; had been
arrested for petty crimes---both Wal-
lace and Woodfox were picked up for
violations of Jim Crow laws, like stand-
ing too close to a building without the
owner's permission---and had been sent
to Angola for robberies. They were all
introduced to the Party in jail and saw
its teachings as a revelation. Until then,
King said, "I had the attitude that life
had nothing more to o er me, nor could
life get anything from me, for I had
nothing. I felt I had done it all and,
should I perish the next morning, so be
it." Woodfox said, "Our instincts and
thoughts were so closely aligned it was
frightening."
In C.C.R., they were permitted to
leave their cells for an hour a day to
walk along the tier alone. During their
free hour, Woodfox, King, and Wallace
held classes for the other inmates,
passing out carbon-copied math and
grammar lessons. Woodfox gave them
twenty-four hours to study lists of
words---"capitalism," "imperialism,"
"feudalism," "totalitarianism," "bour-
geoisie"---and the following day he
quizzed them.
Gary Tyler, an African-American
inmate in C.C.R., said that the teach-
ings made him consider himself a po-
litical prisoner. At seventeen, Tyler was
sentenced to death, after a jury con-
victed him of shooting a white class-
mate who had been protesting the
GILLY'S BOWL & GRILLE
As for the beer, I bring my own. I haven't touched
another human
in twenty-three days, not even someone's palm
passing my change.
I forget---because I am in heels, because California
still owns
a portion of my body, and is on re---my socks.
The owner
of the alley lends me his daughter's,
who is behind
the concession counter and looks, in braces,
blond hair
twisted on top of her head, like she could
be mine. They're clean,
he tells me. Crew, bleached white, mid-Atlantic
preteen packaged.
She wants, I am sure of it, something synthetic.
She wants,
in pink polka dots, in patterned tiny stereos,
to forget
the same ve boys corralling the boxes of M&M's,
sodas sweating
in their Styrofoam cups. Peeling out on the simulated-
driving games,
they push in quarter after quarter she drops to their
cupped hands.
And as I test each polished orb for weight, I think
the white, ribbed
cotton socks are the rows of corn she rides
her brother's bike
by. Shoot after shoot of the alleys
she sweeps
58
THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 16, 2017